The subjects of Her Majesty – for there is no such thing as a British citizen – and the rest of the world are told time and again that the Trident missiles on the nuclear submarines based at Faslane, at Gare Loch, are Britain's independent nuclear deterrent.

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

Those weapons are not an independent nuclear deterrent as they are US missiles and while on UK ships are under US control. The UK could never, independently, use those weapons or not use them. If decreed by the US they will hate to be fired whether the government in Britain at that time wish to do so or not.

The weapons are made in the US, supplied by the US to the MoD (paid for by the British taxpayers) and are carried on British submarines (paid for by the British taxpayers once again) but are basically under the control of the US strategic nuclear command. It is they who decide as and when those weapons are used and the UK government has as much say in that as to whether or not strikes are launched from US airbases in the UK; namely none.

During the Cold War the joke – which is far from a joke – was going around that Britain is but a fixed US aircraft carrier off Europe's shores and this, in fact, was more to the truth than people realized at the time and still is true today.

There is a reason as to why the three “main” parties, the Tories, Labour and the Lib-Dems, do not consider scrapping Trident and that is that they simply cannot for the US won't permit it. The other, smaller parties, who are not insiders, do not realize that, though. See how independent this British nuclear deterrent is. It is even less independent than the Independent Police Complaints Commission.